Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.

Video: Goodbye, Morganza

Devon Blackwell’s short documentary explores how her great-grandparents lost the house they had owned since 1892, and the impact of that loss on generations of her family.

December 6, 2025 · Leave a comment

Video: Play Hard

Nate, a workaholic drummer, spends all his time practicing in pursuit of perfection. When he meets Yazmine, a like-minded, dedicated modern dancer, he realizes that the key to success isn’t just to work hard – sometimes it requires you to play hard.

November 12, 2025 · 7 Comments

Ellen Bryant Voigt | At the Movie: Virginia, 1956

When finally we got our own TV, the evening news
with its hooded figures of the Ku Klux Klan
seemed like another movie

November 2, 2025 · 13 Comments

Daniella Toosie-Watson: A Series of Small Miracles

Listen: in this poem, there are no men.
I give to myself & give again.

October 27, 2025 · 9 Comments

George Yancy: Trump’s Education Plan Seeks to Make Cruel Domination Into “Common Sense”

Control the curriculum and you control the range of ideas that people are exposed to. This is why schooling is inherently political.

October 6, 2025 · 7 Comments

Audio: Son House performing County Farm Blues

Put you under a man called “Captain Jack”
Put you under a man they call “Captain Jack”
He’ll sure write his name up and down your back

September 27, 2025 · 9 Comments

Video: Eternity

Valerie and Alan have been married 57 years. Eternity is a look at love that lasts a lifetime, whether they like it or not.

August 30, 2025 · 4 Comments

Joseph Bathanti: Cletis Pratt

First man I ever saw in irons,
wearing nothing but a pair of scurvy white
long john britches, was Cletis Pratt

August 28, 2025 · 12 Comments

Video: Dear Philadelphia

With the help of their family, friends, and faith, three fathers unravel the incomparable partnership of forgiveness and community in North Philadelphia.

July 19, 2025 · Leave a comment

Langston Hughes | Beaumont to Detroit: 1943

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
from the ku klux klan.

July 4, 2025 · 22 Comments

Desne A. Crossley: A Wallflower and Her Mother

Clueless about west coast Whiteness, for sure. For my anxious mother, this meant I needed her singular brand of watchful encouragement to grow into a whole person, a whole woman—and to be taught some street smarts for life in suburban Palo Alto with its unfamiliar patterns and pitfalls.

June 27, 2025 · 14 Comments

Don Krieger: Juneteenth at Carter-Howell-Strong Park in Tallahassee

Two-hundred forty years after America’s Independence Day: “… one in a thousand black men [in America] can expect to be killed by police.

June 19, 2025 · 6 Comments

Jessie Redmon Fauset: Nostalgia

Lonely log cabin
On the road to Notasulga,
Sighing and sagging and quaking;
Let me breathe to the heart of your walls
A secret—

June 19, 2025 · 5 Comments

Langston Hughes: Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)

June 13, 2025 · 9 Comments

Archives